


Out of the Red Waste He Came

by Terisrog



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (Let It Be Noted They Are Still Facepalming Now), (That Would Be the E Rating Lying in Wait in Chapter 3), (Though Irri and Doreah Are Not Fooled), A Quarrel With High Stakes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dothraki Timeframe, F/M, Falling In Love, Father of Dragons, Feelings, Feels, Generally There Is Tension (Lots), Happy Ending, Hiking in the Desert, Idiots in Love, Knight & Queen, Legendary Knight, Love Scene, Misunderstandings, Pining, Pledges of Love, Pre-Qarth, Secret Crush, Set at the beginning of s2, Songs and Histories From the Seven Kingdoms, Storytelling by the Fire, Tales, Tension, The Sun Being Enamoured Of Jorah, Why Won't He Love Meeeeeee?, all the feels, eternal love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:46:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26425093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terisrog/pseuds/Terisrog
Summary: Daenerys and her khalasar must cross the Red Waste to reach the Narrow Sea. Her sole moral strength is a Legendary Knight she dreamed out of tales from the Seven Kingdoms. When Ser Jorah Mormont appears in the desert and saves her life, she falls passionately in love with him. But as they journey together towards Vaes Tolorro, Daenerys starts to fear her affections might remain forever unrequited. Will he ever be her Knight?
Relationships: Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 52
Kudos: 45
Collections: Jorleesi Equinox Exchange -Fall 2020





	1. But I, being poor, have only my dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bridgr6](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bridgr6/gifts).



> Dear Bridgr6,  
> Equinox season is upon us at last, and today is your gift’s day! A Gifter Has No Name but can still write an author’s note, right?  
> Right: it’s harvest time and I’ve harvested the first of your prompts. (Just looved playing with Jorah coming later into Daenerys’ life!!) You had such a wonderful idea! Oh and on the plus side, this first twist allowed me to take a dab at another of your prompts—the reverse AU one. Unless maaaybe just maybe it was the other way around, and the second prompt inspired me for the first, but I’ll take the secret with me to the Underworld until AT LEAST Spring.  
> Knuckleheads refused offers of fluff and decided to be difficult™ instead, but I’ll be gracious and allow you the honour of bashing their heads together. Nonetheless it occurred to me that I should somehow compensate the fluff shortage, and that shrewd effort can be recognized in the form of some winks to your other prompts.  
> Onwards (drumrolllllls) with the General Bridgr6 Appreciation Convention! Whether you forgive me for the Angst Attacks or not, thank you for your kindness and your warm enthusiasm on each of your posts on Ao3 and Tumblr. I must of course mention your lovely scribbles and drawings of Jorah—thank you! Thank you for the beautiful paintings and photographs you share, and sometimes capture. Seven warm thanks, too, for seven Jorleesi fanfics you were awesome enough to write and share (at the time I’m writing this note)! Finally, a general thank you for having a positive impact on our Jorleesi corner of the world. On and on I could go, but let’s not derail the notes word count further, shall we?  
> Really, you should own a Jorah sculpture made of spaghetti. You deserve to celebrate in style! Obviously Internet refused to comply though (meh) so I offer this story instead to forgetti our regretti.  
> Until better spaghetti logistics, here’s to a wonderful Equinox day!  
> xxx
> 
> If you are curious, the following prompts inspired this fanfic:  
> 
> 
>   * "I’d really love a work that has Jorah coming into Dany’s life later into her journey or any twist or new take on their first meeting."
>   * "I’ve always liked the idea of a reverse AU for these two. Any role reversal of their personalities, positions (Jorah as exiled rightful ruler/Dany banished from her home), or even their feelings (Dany falls for Jorah first), would be amazing."
> 

> 
> The chapter titles are quotes from "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" by W.B. Yeats.
> 
> Many thanks to [@clarasimone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarasimone/pseuds/clarasimone/works), whose feedback is precious.

Deep in her thoughts, she cries: her Knight is not here.

“I miss you,” she thinks. But that isn’t quite true; she doesn’t regret his absence. If only she knew him well enough to know how to regret him. If only his absence was but a temporary displacement, instead of this blackness of a hole she’s drowning in. If only she were missing someone instead of living with fetters of might-have-been, instead of having to exist under this forever shadow of having been cheated out of him.

When she was a little girl, a tiny girl—before she had more people to miss; always more—she wished for a knight to be there, her Knight, to play with her between her red door and her lemon tree. She longed for it when all of them left her to look upon the future on her own, to resist her brother without help. Oh why weren’t you there then to tell me Viserys was less than the shadow of a snake? Why didn’t you tell me he shed his skin of love for one of hate, and that he falsely used the word? And then she had ached and begged, her heart tearing in anguish; you can’t leave me alone here; you can’t—you must exist, you must be somewhere. Why aren’t you with me?

And then Viserys had sold her and, worse, perhaps, Illyrio had let him. _She_ had let him. She let herself be led; but no more. No more would she ever believe someone loved her.

She was left alone, well, then—let it be for the best. She would burn them all. She didn’t need anyone. There was one person at least who had always been there for her; herself. She would never let herself down. She would be there, until the very end. When she would float, for one last moment, in the breath she wouldn’t know to be her last; she would still be there, loving all her past selves when no one else had.

She liked her khalasar; cherished some of them, even. She was grateful to Doreah for having taught her to manage Drogo better. Her Sun and Stars; always there—never letting her be; she could almost believe he meant to love her. She could, almost, believe wrenching pleasure from him was the same as loving him.

She was so very fond of Irri, without whom she might never have learned to speak Dothraki. She liked how she did her hair; and how Rakharo had taken her side against Viserys, before she herself believed she was meant to be a Khaleesi.

But she wasn’t fooled. They didn’t love her—they did to a point, but they would never love her _enough_. All she would ever earn was their love for a Khaleesi, for a Queen, a ruler. She would have subjects at best; and she would take care of them all. And sooner or later, they would leave. They would leave her all alone. She’d stand in ruins once more. They wouldn’t take her heart, no; she had learned her lesson hard, she had shattered her hopes against it. No more would anyone leave before she opened the door to them. No more would she expect anyone to stay.

 _You will die, or you will walk, or you will forget, or you will leave; your love is fickle. You will never love me enough._ _You_ is everyone, anyone—she wants to keep them at bay; it’s easier than she wishes: they are keeping their distances anyway.

But today, now, in this marketplace just out in the fringes of Vaes Dothrak, she recognizes something; she hears a call. It’s the books on the stall. She feels a pang of something sweet. It tastes like home; it feels like hope.

It shouldn’t: home is long lost. The red door is forever closed, forever out of her reach. “I miss you,” she thinks, and yet she can’t. She can’t miss something that cannot exist. I miss more than reality could ever bring, she thinks, I miss more than what is possible.

And yet, what doesn’t exist is piercing her heart. So much she wishes she could set it in stone, in dragonglass, in fiery sun and endless night.

There are three books, singing to her heart, calling for her hands to touch them; one is set in a belt-like binding, strapped closed by a leather buckle. Its spotted pages show behind the brown leather. One is set is in leather and waxed clean, almost blue between the winks of the sun. One is tied in raw string, its back bare, its spine blond, the knots poking out like veins. She reaches her hand; the stallholder moves to strike it away but holds himself when he sees Rakharo behind her.

“They are fragile,” he says instead. “Songs and histories from the Seven Kingdoms. Pay for them or leave them. You’ll spoil the goods with your hands.”

The price is ridiculous; but she wants them. Songs from the Seven Kingdoms are bound to sing of Knights. She longs for home too much to leave them behind, even if home can only be found back in a time long gone, far in a time that never was.

She pays, and holds them to her chest. Her heart flutters against them; she can feel her pulse on the paper. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine there is another heart too in them, beating for her; even if it doesn’t know it yet.

The wind whispers: out of the Red Waste he’ll come.

*******

Deep in her thoughts, she cries: her Knight is not here.

She now knows where he hides; he’s not from this world. He lives in the books, in the legends and tales of long time past. Perhaps he never was at all; perhaps it took the deeds of a hundred men to make a Knight such as him and press him on paper like a flower. He’s flat and dry, but if she looks really hard at the lines the letters trace, she can see him as he’s meant to be. And the rare spots of ink—the occasional wobble on the lettering—show just enough flaws for her Knight to be human.

Her Knight has no face; he has no sex, either. He could be a woman, too, if she believed it could be so. And yet, however unlikely her Knight is to find her, it seems unlikelier yet that a Knight may be a woman. When she rules the Seven Kingdoms, this too she will change. But however powerful she grows, never will she able to create her Knight out of thin air, to make her own warrior flesh and blood and heart and devoted to her. She has paid the cost of magic badly wished, she has lost a son to it; never again.

She doesn’t know what he looks like, but she knows how he will feel. He will be outward sun and inner moon: her image in a mirror and yet more than she is. He will be hers but never her, so that she may desire him through time and tide and the turn of age. He will be safe. He will have the strength of Gods, not chiefly in brawn; but in that he’ll hold her in his faith even if the Doom strikes him.

He will smell of home and of warmth. He will be her haven. He will be the one whose love she can believe in. With him, she will be free; she will be loved and free, she will be safe and soaring. She will be able to tell him all of herself without fear his eyes will cloud over, trying to see the Mad King in her blood, in her actions, in her stumbles. He will trust her; he’ll be both on his knees worshipping her and high above, protecting her; and unfolding her in his arms, kissing her.

She doesn’t know his name; she knows he has a name she can say breathlessly, articulate silently, and yet it will be a name that will scratch her throat raw as she cries it out in his arms. It has sounds, his name, that can merge into shouts and gasps, so that he will never quite know if it’s his name or her heart she rasps out.

She doesn’t care; he can be anyone, any age, any shape, she won’t care—oh she won’t, if only he could be real, she would not ask for more—for more than a love that can seep through all her heart, that can cherish all of the dens she had to hide away.

The wind whispers: out of the Red Waste he’ll come.

*******

Deep in her thoughts, she cries: her Knight is not here.

Would he help her if he were?

The red comet can’t have been an omen, in the end. Or if it was, then it was a harbinger of her surrender.

It’s hot, so hot her skin melts with the air; she can’t feel her edges. And yet this doesn’t bother her; she welcomes the heat. In fire she feels her power and her dragon blood. But her tongue feels huge, swollen; it tries to drink at the pores of her palate, in the sweat of the sky; but there’s no water to be found, nowhere. If she only could drink fire; if only she could spout fire; then she’d burn the Red Waste to decay and ruin; she would force greenery out of desolation.

There were rivers here, once; no more. The beds are there, swept up in rocks and red powder; the grinds of time eating at the desert whole; and it bleeds.

She looks around and everything is the same, out there in the Red Waste; the same relentless sky, the same sea of rolling dry hills, and the wavering heat, so hot it blisters the air, makes it tremble in front of her eyes.

There were cities, here, once; no more. The ruins are there; so old they’re older than the Doom. She looks for ghosts; she finds none. Lonely are the valleys of dust; in dust too she will dissolve.

Her babies whimper pitifully; they are made of fire and though the heat doesn’t scorch them, they feel the lack of water. She has none; if she had, she would give it to them first.

Fire cannot kill a dragon, she repeats to herself. Yet she knows it’s almost always _a lack of_ that kills, at the end of all things. One doesn’t die because the assault was too strong; but because there wasn’t enough left to fight back.

She has entered the Red Waste; and something in the whole world feels wasted.

She is wasted, because she’s all alone, and he is not there—he never is. He’s not there as the moon, or the stars, or the sun; he’s not there as the rain or the night. He’s not even there as the past, breathing a laugh through space to tickle her ear in wind, as her brother Rhaegar sometimes does.

She looks at the waste and her faith crumbles in the immensity. Her faith in herself. “I can’t go on,” she thinks. And her faith in him. “You will never exist now,” she thinks. And something in her chest coils, and rips, and rebels.

She sees in haze, in colours, in swirls, in truth in grey—in truth in absence; in truth she can’t. She knows she touches the ground, she knows once this rock under her thigh hurt; it doesn’t now. Maybe it crumbled to dust; maybe she is. She doesn’t remember smelling anything; she doesn’t remember tasting anything over than nothingness. But still she hears. She hears the wind kissing the land; he mocks her; even the wind has someone to love and be with.

But she’s alone, after all, at the end of all things. She can no longer be strong. She’s leaving herself—to die.

The wind whispers: out of the Red Waste he’ll come.


	2. I have spread my dreams under your feet

Deep in her thoughts, she cries: her Knight is not here.

And yet someone is.

For out of the hollowness, a soft rumbling comes. Oh, this sound is a flame she can soften in; an embrace made voice. It purrs yellow and melts orange and bites blue.

The sound breaks itself up to form words; words of the Common Tongue, words she knows the shape of without having to trace their edges tentatively. “My Lady?” the voice says and says again. “My Lady,” it says and roams and saunters on the rocks of the Red Waste, “My Lady!” it drifts and entreats her; “My Lady…” the voice is saying. Was this lady her, then?

She feels a breeze on her mouth. She used to know what this was—water, absorbed by her dried-out lips. A shiver runs through her, and she finds in herself to open her eyes.

She looks—she looks upon… She’s looking at—she—

“My Lady?” The voice follows her behind her closed eyes.

This must be how it feels to look at the Seven, to gaze upon their seven faces all at once, and realize the Seven Who Are One are indeed one: one God and Goddess and both; one being that is everything.

She must look again, before the fear of the vision having faded grows too great. She pries her eyelids open, and the illusion is still there, for her to feast her eyes on, for her to watch without having to squint at the depths of her mind.

The apparition is still there.

With its aura of gold; the sun becomes tame upon meeting his skin, his hair, his twinkling bracelets and his shirt in its image—the rays rescind their teeth, the sun furls its strands gently, oh, gently in the strands of his curls.

With its eyes of faraway blue, its face upon which memories that are not hers play and sigh on creases. She wants to tear their secrets out of him; she wants him to pledge all the lines to come will be hers. She wants to know if she can make these lines move, for her, in smiles truer than any his lips could gift her. His lips—that are almost as tanned as his face; protected by dangerous cheekbones and by spikes of golden hair. This beard kisses his neck all the way down to his chest, crossed out by a rich leather brown.

With its gait, solemn and sure, gentle and courtly—in truth he looks from out of her books.

The Knight is looking at her with concern. “My Lady?” he incites her yet again, setting a light-hand on her brow, rolling his fingers on her skin. “Can you hear me?”

“I’m not a Lady,” she proclaims, though the effect is spoilt by her too-dry throat. “I’m a Khaleesi.”

“My Lady Khaleesi,” he defers drily, bowing his head.

“I… no, it’s…” But she can almost believe her Knight is saying these words that kiss her nerves awake. Maybe _he_ can call her thus—and so she nods, and drinks more of the water he offers.

“Are you from my country?” he asks her, his brows furrowed against a curiosity that doesn’t want to be felt.

“Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Unburnt and Mother of Dragons,” she answers proudly. She’s in rags and yet she believes in her titles more than she ever has, telling them to him. It makes them true.

That earns her his gaze, sharp and looking deep into her soul for some heartbeats; then his eyes cut away, munching at what they learned. He stays silent; from time to time, his eyes needle back to her face, and then are lost. Then he pins her once more and says: “I declined to spy on you, moons ago. Seems fate is insistent. Won’t earn me a pardon now, though.”

Daenerys’ world spins and spins; it’s dehydration, she tells herself, though she knows it’s not. It’s the sense he could have been there, with her, so much sooner, and was not. What if—

But he’s looking at her feet, at the prostrate and silent forms of her children.

“How do your beasts drink?” he asks. She shakes her head: “They are dragons, and my children. Do not call them beasts, please.” He peruses her gravelly, looks at her dragons, and asks again: “How do your children drink, then?” Her heart soars; he hides under a cynical layer, that man who could be her Knight, and yet can sooner believe they are her children than myths made flesh! She wants to reach for him in gratitude. He prompts her: “Lap it up, like dogs? Or suck it up like horses do?”

“Neither—rather like birds. They hold a mouthful in their mouths, and then they tilt their head back so the water can trickle down their throats. I... Our flasks were so empty, I couldn’t make…” Tears pool in her eyes. She sees him see them and hide his glance somewhere in the distance over her ear. He shifts his weight, fiddles with the beads on his wrists.

“I have no bowl,” he warns, “this will be wasteful and messy.” He scowls so much she wonders if he sees himself in a palace with dishes of crystal and doors of dragonglass, instead of that deserted land of ground-milled opportunities.

He shoves the flask in her hands and cups his own, then looks at her grouchily. Daenerys pours the water in the well they make, trying not to get lost in that flesh, in the power these hands exude, in the lines and veins under the skin of the fingers. He places his cupped hands close to the ground, and let her pet Drogon awake; her babe is weak and yet smells the water close, and manages to put his nuzzle in the offered cup.

The man seems unafraid, as though he had always been a dragon caretaker in all his lives. He keeps his hands very still and hums a calming chant, encouraging her child to drink unafraid. When he has drunk more, Drogon chirps in tune and she looks for a smile on the rugged face of her saviour. She can’t find one and yet she knows it’s hidden away; if only she could crack his composure to see how it would look like.

When Rhaegal and Viserion wake up and fight over the water, the scene turns messy indeed. Drogon has climbed on the Knight and is munching at his curls. Sharp teeth graze the leather binding his thumb. Through it all he sits supremely composed, and she cannot guess what he thinks. How she wishes she could.

“Are you a Knight?” she can reign the question in no longer.

“Aye, my Lady Khaleesi, though on these lands I only am Jorah the Andal—a lie that; it is fitting,” he tells her rather sombrely, and then he straightens, causing Drogon to dig his claws to his shoulders to keep his position. “Once upon a time, they knew me as Ser Jorah Mormont of Bear Island.”

 _Ser Jorah_ , she breathes his name in. The name nestles into her heart, and grows, and grows, and grows, and clashing against her elation there is fear; fear that when his flame is extinguished, she will go out.

The wind whispers: out of the Red Waste he’ll come.

*******

Deep in her thoughts, she cries: her Knight is not here.

For once she doesn’t care.

A Knight is with her, even if he’s a sulky one, even if he’s not hers. A Knight whose skin is ruddy-red-gold in the waning sun.

“How did you come to be all alone out here, my Lady Khaleesi?” his voice rasps. She starts to hear him speak, to find his eyes on her, watching. How queer he would watch her back; how quaint he would be flesh and voice, out of her head, there to answer and demand.

“I’m not!” she exclaims. He looks stonily at her. “I’m not,” she repeats, looking around. But she is. Has she walked far, in her daze? “I’m with my khalasar, and I’ve sent my bloodriders to scout ahead, to find water for us, but I don’t… where is Irri? Where is?…”

“Most likely she’s dead—most likely they all are,” Ser Jorah answers curtly, but his brow gets lighter when she exclaims in protest. He meant it as a kindness, she realises, so she doesn’t hold on to false hope. He’s unthawing her heart, and she’s not sure she wants him to; but she can’t resist him.

“If we’re to find them, you need to eat, child,” he adds gently under a layer of gruff. He produces an offering; a peach, small and short of shrivelled—she looks at the fruit in wonder. He could close his fingers round it and still have space to spare; his ring wouldn’t bruise the soft skin, the shimmering dry fluffy pink. His fingers are worn and solid, and delicate; could he hold her heart in the palm of his hand? Could he close this hand against her breast, and make it come sharp? Her cheeks flush; he regards her silently, the peach between them; she can’t tell what he thinks. He’s still; he’s patient; is that why the desert has no claim over him? And yet, in his stormy eyes and clenched jaw, she sees something of a flight, something of a fight, and she can’t believe his heart and blood stay as still as his main.

Daenerys takes the peach, letting her wrist graze his skin; she wishes she could touch him more, to understand how he flows under that dry skin. The gesture chains his eyes to hers, for a moment; and then he’s gone once more. _Child_. She longs for someone to protect her, yes; but not like this. She is no cub; she is a mother, and a Khaleesi, and a woman, and one day she will be a Queen. But she doesn’t know how to say this to him; and so she stays silent, and as she bites into the fruit and looks up at him behind her lashes, she hopes he can see that she is no girl; and when she licks away the sweet, sweet juice that she can’t afford to lose to her skin, she hopes he can see that, one day, she could lick away his sweat just as well.

He looks at her, she can see; intent and focused and understanding she knows not what. When she’s sucking on the peach stone, sucking the last drops of sugar even if it sores her tongue, he speaks again: “From what direction have you wandered here?”

She looks about; she can’t see the difference. She doesn’t remember. She’s not quite sure she walked here; what if Irri, Rakharo and Doreah, all of her retinue simply disappeared? What if the land has taken them in, as tribute for safe passage?

“Are we at the end of the world?” she says out loud—she’s used to silence answering her queries, to the phantom presence of her Knight at her side, who can’t answer lest she puts words for him in his mouth.

“Not yet,” the Knight answers. “Look around; there’s no moonlit grass come hither to swallow all.”

She startles; this is no tale she could have put on his lips, ever. This Knight is real then; she’s not dreaming. Maybe he’s no delusion.

“You do not know the legend of your people, _Khaleesi_?” he quips, though he mocks gently, his growled tone sounding worse than the bite in his meaning; worse in a way she can’t explain. In a way that grips something inside, and twists. “The Dothraki believe that one day, the ghost grass will cover everything. In the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, stalks as pale as milk glow in the night and murder all other grass. When it gets to us—then it will be the end of the world. You are safe.”

“With you?” she breathes, less teasing than it sounded in her head.

His eyes roam her hair, her chin, then look back at her, long enough for him to answer: “For now.”

Ser Jorah ponders at something she cannot see; she rests her eyes for a minute. The world is still shaky, still diluted. The dreams are watering down her reality; or maybe it’s the reverse. Then there’s a scuffle, and she opens her eyes to Ser Jorah’s fingers being eaten by Rhaegal—what on… “Rhaegal!” she snaps. He doesn’t often obey her orders, but he lets go now. Ser Jorah holds two fingers tightly curled, though his skin seems not to have broken under Rhaegal’s baby teeth. “Peach pits are toxic,” he says grouchily. “It’s the almond inside. Poisonous.”

“I…” she stares at him in wide-eyed wonder. She’s not as shaken as if she’d thought this small almond could really have hurt her babe—or she never would have let the stone fall to the ground—but her heart swells at the thought he cared enough to plunge his hand into a dragon’s maw. “I thank you, Ser Jorah Mormont.”

He flexes his jaw and looks down. What bear of a Knight are you, Ser Jorah? she thinks.

Rhaegal is looking guiltily up at Ser Jorah, who sighs down at him and holds his hand for him to bump his muzzle on.

The wind whispers: out of the Red Waste he’ll come.

*******

Deep in her thoughts, she cries: her Knight is not here.

A golden one stands in his stead.

Ser Jorah is shuffling on his heels, his hand hovering over the ground, touching it—caressing it, even—as if looking for a pulse. His fingers are dusted in red; if he were to graze her now, he would leave a trail of his touch in his wake.

She cannot see what he sees; and yet she trusts him. Trust? Why—because he resembles the Knight she had dreamed about? Yes; yes. She can’t deny it—not even to herself. She knows he is not her Knight; he can’t be. That Knight was but a dream, but a thirst unquenched and forever unmet. He is not her Knight exactly; but the only difference, she has to acknowledge, is that he doesn’t love her. He doesn’t look at her as he would a goddess; he doesn’t worship her in every glance; he doesn’t dream of her when his eyes leave her to think on tracks she does not travel on.

When she focuses back on the world, he is looking at her, checking she follows without stumbling. They make slow progress; he feeds her water or dry horseflesh. He always seems to know where he’s leading them. The fine skin under his eyes squeezes the horizon dry. He snags tracks and clues out of crunched dust.

Jorah takes out some grapes; the violet against his darkly pink lips makes something in her twist. When he crushes the seeds between his teeth, and moves to crunch them anew, his cheeks curve the hollow of his cheekbones, dig them deeper; she can’t look away. Sugary juice escapes to his lips; they glisten under the sun, under her gaze; they look pink-kissed, pink-bitten—his tongue darts out to lick the sweetness away. He catches her eyes; his are unblinking, fixed, and she leans towards him, the dance of her eyebrows, uncontrollable, making her face beg.

“You want some?” he asks, his voice roughened in sugar.

She nods wordlessly, and he hands her some grapes, keeping her trapped under his stare.

“You came all this way with such a heavy bag, and no food at all inside?” he asks.

“Oh… these are my books.” She takes them out, with care, to show them to him. “They are songs and histories from the Seven Kingdoms. I’ve been reading them to remind me of home. I don’t remember how it was, you see.”

“These were mine,” he breathes. He sees the way her hand curls on the cover, caressing it fondly. He sees something in that gesture she does not understand. His brow furrows, his eyes turn sharp as glass.

“How do you mean, yours?”

“I’ve had them made. Then—I had no money, and no hiring contract, and so I sold them to move here.”

The ground opens under her feet. _His?_ How is that possible? Has her destiny dangled him just out of her grasp for years? She looks at him in despair.

He swallows. “You enjoy them, then?”

“Yes!” she snaps herself out of her trance. He can’t know she’s been waiting for hi—for someone like—for _her Knight_ her whole life. “Do you remember this one?” she concentrates to mould her voice to the tale. “Gather round and hear my tale; tis the song of a tamed bear,” she chances a quick look at him. She feels self-conscious, launching into it out loud, under his heavy eyes. Does he hate how she recounts the story from his books? “And in the circus the bear danced, he danced with a maiden, and the maiden was fair. The maiden was fair and the bear was cursed, they said, by a witch he had spurned.”

He is listening; she can see his profile, his straight-edged nose regal. She shakes herself; why is she losing her mind over his nose? Is the gold encompassing him a magical dust, an outwardly dust that ensnares and traps her?

“The bear was gold and the maiden was cursed, they said, by a witch she had been preferred to. Twas not so, the maiden protested—for all women are allied in power, if men do not the quill hold. But she protested in vain; a witch is a witch when villains must be made. Whoever the witch and whichever the curse, her lover was a bear, and he could stand on two legs and dance longer than the night, in summer and winter, in spring and fall; but a man he could not be. In the day they lay in each other’s arms, and their eyes locked, they dreamed of escaping. And yet dreams, dear heart,” she blushes upon the words she recited so many times to herself, “cannot stay dreams for ever. Either reality bursts them, or they burst through reality.”

Ser Jorah is very still.

“The bear was fair, but his soul was bruised pomegranate; his hopes were dead. And at the end of hope, doors are very difficult to see, and keys are nigh on impossible to find. The maiden was gold, and her soul was bruised sage; her hopes grew long and scented the world in it. ‘What’s chaining us is not the curse, my love,’ the maiden-who-was-not said. ‘What’s chaining us is that you’d allow your form to be a curse; and that you’d allow for your curse to keep you bound to this circus.’ The bear growled, and wouldn’t listen. And each night they danced; they danced for small crowds and giant weddings. They danced under the Moon’s eyes and they danced in pitch-dark sky. They danced amongst the stars and they danced round and round the ring, and they danced, danced, danced.”

She pauses; Ser Jorah is silent. He’s looking straight ahead. The sun is setting; his face is cast in shadows. She is so still she thinks she can smell him; he smells like she imagined fire would smell, if fire would take form as a man. He doesn’t stop her; and so on she goes.

“One night the maiden fair bound the eyes of her golden bear. ‘The crowd will go wild,’ she assured him. ‘And you know my every step, you could dance with me blind.’ They danced the night away, and when the red sparks of dawn caught his fur, the maiden kept him dancing, and twirled him away, away from the ring, away from the circus; shouts rang behind them; she ignored them. ‘Dance with me longer, dear heart,’ she told her bear. ‘Just a little bit longer,’ and through dawn they danced, and all through morning so too they danced. ‘Are you burning my fur thus, my love?’ the bear asked, and the maiden answered, “Yes, dear heart, it’s my love burning you, and setting you free from this curse.’ And through noontide they danced, and through time they danced; and perhaps they are dancing still. For until her love believes she sees not a monster, the maiden will dance.”

The silence grows between them; Jorah is looking quite sullen. Has she recited badly? Does he hate the tale?

“You quite like this bear, don’t you?” he asks, and she thinks she must have been mistaken. His voice is so very gentle now.

“Yes, I am very fond of him! Don’t you love how they escape?”

“I sold people into slavery,” he answers abruptly. She pauses, raising her eyebrows at him, but he doesn’t retreat. There’s a trace of a twisted refraction in this leap he made—it keeps slipping just out of her grasp. Slavery? She speaks of freedom!

“Do you regret it?” she asks sharply.

“Yes.”

“Because it cost you your position?”

“No longer,” he sighs. “At first it was all I regretted, yes. To be stripped of my rank, banished from my home, torn out of my lands. Then, I regretted it because I’ve betrayed who I was for my wife, and the riches I procured cost me dearly—and I cost these people more. I told myself it made no difference. Law said I had to execute them, or send them to the Wall. Their lives were forfeit either way, and, if I sold them, I could get money out of it, at least. But now, it’s only their lives I regret.”

“You will make sure your debt was not bargained with fate in vain, Ser Jorah,” she says. “If you stay by my side, you will help me break chains.”

He nods, but doesn’t speak. It hurts more than she thought it would; she stays the command that he would pledge eternal fealty to her, and assuages her pain with another one, this phantom lady that perhaps he still loves, and searches in her face even now.

“Where is your lady wife now, Ser Jorah?”

“In another place, with another man. And your lord husband? He was one of the Dothraki, then?”

“Khal Drogo,” she answers shortly. She doesn’t want to admit to him she gambled in magic, and lost, and had to strangle her husband with a pillow. Not yet. If ever she was pure in his eyes, she wants to stay this way for as long as she can. “He’s dead.”

“I knew him,” he says. “I heard of—I’m sorry—I—”

“And my son Rhaego too,” she goes on before she can stop herself. If she can’t share this weight on her heart with him, who would she ever share it with? “He never breathed and yet—” She trails off. What if he doesn’t understand? But he does. He always does, it seems. He nods, sadly, but his eyes look straight into hers, not shying away from grief.

“Three children were taken from me before they could even look at us, before we had the right to name them. My first wife and I, I mean. My father made the arrangement, but he could not make us happy, nor make our children live. Yet still they are with me.”

“And so—you are a Knight errant now, Ser?” She must steer away the conversation from mourning, for now, before she cries. She never cries—not anymore.

“I have made my quarters in an abandoned city out there. I rule over white walls and ghosts. Over a city of bones.”

“Vaes Tolorro,” says Daenerys. He nods slowly. The sun illuminates him from behind. He’s undressed by the light; the light wears away any solidness his yellow shirt had; the cloth turns gauzy. She can see his flesh under the garment; she can guess his nipples—she has some colour to draw the hardness of his stomach on.

“And looking at these tracks here, it seems your retinue went in that direction too. If they move then they’re alive, some of them at least. And it will greatly facilitate our search. If they found shelter there, they’ll have some food, even for the horses, and some water.”

Viserion has settled himself on Jorah’s boot while he was examining the spoors on the ground, and refuses to leave now, playing with the straps and chewing at the leather. Jorah scoops him up and put him in his shirt. Viserion snuggles happily against Jorah’s chest—Jorah’s chest, if she looks at her dragon she has to look back at his chest, it can’t be helped. After a time, Viserion starts singing, and Jorah looks at him quizzically.

“He’s warming up when he does that,” Ser Jorah tells her, a shadow of a question in the tilt of his voice.

“Well,” she laughs at him in answer. “You are quite the tamer.”

He looks severely at her.

“They are dragons, my Lady Khaleesi. They can never be tamed.”

“Right,” concedes Daenerys laughingly, but as she looks at her baby child tucked into Jorah’s shirt, her mood tilts back into sadness. Truly, how long can this moment last? Viserion won’t stay such a tiny cub of a dragon long; he will grow. And then he will leave, won’t he? Or if he does not leave, at least his little paws will no longer be hers to play with. He will not need her to get food, he will not… need her for anything. She will be superfluous in his life. And then—will she still be his mother? Will he still be her son? And Ser Jorah—he is not pledged to her. How long does she have before he considers this quest fulfilled? How long does she have until she’s all alone? _I don’t want to bear it all alone_ , she thinks as hard as she can at Jorah. Oh why can’t she save this moment so she can return to it time and again, when time dusts them all away?

When she tears her eyes from the ground, Ser Jorah is looking at her, concern held between the furrows of his brow.

“Even wild things know love, my Lady Khaleesi,” he tells her gently, holding her in his gaze, “they will remember it, and feel it.”

And she feels like weeping, she feels like clawing her heart out of her chest to force it into his hands, to force him to hold it and cherish it, to stain his hands in her blood, to mark his flesh so deep he will never be able to erase her.

The wind whispers: out of the Red Waste he’ll come.

*******

Deep in her thoughts, she cries: her Knight is not here.

She tells of him to Ser Jorah.

They’re sitting by the fire, before dawn; it crackles. It casts honey shadows on Jorah’s face. The smoke stings her eyes, just a little; less than looking at Ser Jorah on the other side of the flames does.

“The Knight cried for his sword,” Daenerys recites. “His tears were not for the battles he would no longer win. They were not for the enemies he would face with a weapon unfamiliar to him. They were for his sword, who had been yielded for three eras of wars; his sword poets would no longer praise in their songs. It wasn’t often Fire was gifted tears. A flame is made of water too; too much and it will drown. But tears, freely shed and given in love, made Fire burn hotter. It was a long time since Fire had felt something; anything; humans were so very dull. Fire wanted to play with them but their flesh was too weak; not one of them wanted to embrace him.”

Ser Jorah is looking at her through the flames; she can see them dance in his eyes. They are blue still; but they are a blue kissed by fire, a blue of the setting sun mating with the ocean after a long day of wait.

“The Knight caught Fire in his hands and prayed: ‘Please forge my sword anew. I will give you anything in trade.’ Fire cracked against the wood keeping him fed; he sparkled against the air, and licked around the Knight’s fingers. ‘I will forge your sword,’ Fire said. ‘And in exchange, I will have you.’ The Knight nodded. ‘This is fair,’ said he. The flames bowed like the tide in his hands. The Knight watched Fire make his sword anew. Then he stepped into Fire’s embrace, and was not seen again.”

As she concludes the tale, Daenerys plunges her own hands into their fire. “Be careful!” Ser Jorah cries, rising up in alarm. But she waves him away and lets her hands roam the flames. She sees him behind the wall of fire, lit up in cold, framed in white. She imagines touching him as she caresses the fire, she can see her hands moving in front of his chest.

When at last she gets her hands out, Ser Jorah is looking at her; his eyes widened in wonderment. He moves towards her, a knee on the ground, extends his arm and catches her hand; her heart skips a beat, then two, then she realises she has stopped breathing. Is a touch supposed to feel like this? His skin reflects flames trapped in amber; how golden he is, against her fair skin. Can she really feel the lines on his fingertips, or is that her nerves singing?

She looks up to his face; his lips are parted, as he surveys her hand, as he touches it so very gently in his large one.

Is a look supposed to feel like this? She swallows inside out; and it’s a craving she absorbs against its will. Because the yearning wants out; it wants more. It wants to devour, and if it can’t, it will turn against her.

“I told you I stepped through the flames to get here, so that my babies could be born. Do you believe me now?”

“Yes,” he whispers. Then he looks at her, looks down, looks at her, and asks: “You are fond of this Knight, are you not?”

“I adore him,” she answers, her eyes shining. The dragons are sleeping in the flames, chirping quietly. She is lost in the Red Waste, and yet it feels like home.

Ser Jorah stares at a point above her shoulder, in a daze; she can see he would still be shocked of witnessing her grab the fire. She should have warned him, maybe. Her eyes follow the hem of his ears, delicately lined, his hair whispering over them. She thinks of his hand on her, and there’s a heaving up her body. Her lips open at the shock. What is _that_?

She darts a look at him and thinks back on his hand, and it happens again; a fire licking her nerves, a want, an unmet need.

“We can’t delay,” Jorah says, cutting her thoughts, though his voice doesn’t douse them. “We have to reach the city of bones before our supplies run out.”

The moon wanes and the sun rises; on they walk—the moon brightens and the sun subsides; they walk on. The more they walk, the more Daenerys finds Jorah when she loses herself in her thoughts; in her mind. A Jorah who doesn’t give her ghosts of touch. Is she wrong to want him? She knows nothing of him—though that isn’t true. She does. She just wishes she knew more.

She just wishes she had always known him.

She just wishes she could put her mouth on his heart and listen to his life unfold; she just wishes he would cradle her head. She wants to trust him; but she’s so afraid. There would be no going back if he betrayed her; there would be no going back if he left her dreams alone; unreturned, unanswered—unwanted.

It’s almost too late already.

“How did you find me, out in the desert? How did you know to even look?”

“I saw a red comet, and I thought I’d see if, maybe,” his eyes cut away, “fragments could be found.”

“Fragments?” She doesn’t believe him, and smiles at him. “Or a sign?”

“Bits and pieces,” he persists. “I do not look for signs. I’m a cynic.”

“You may cover it up and deny it, but you have a gentle heart,” says Daenerys. She wants to ask what caused him to encase himself in armour. He wasn’t a cynic at heart, _she was sure of it_. She has seen his soft glance, the light crinkles at the corner of his eyes, the bashful smiles he tries to burry in the ground. What has hurt you, Ser Jorah?, she wants to ask— _who_ did? Your wife? What manner of spell have you cast upon yourself, to escape the life that strangled you?

Ser Jorah _was_ a Knight. And perhaps, she thinks, as she looks upon his weary face, in his far-seeing eyes and at his mouth trained to be wary of smiles, he needed someone to believe in him too. A champion. Someone he could make proud, while wearing their favour. 

She’s coiling on herself; she wants _out_. She yearns to, to, to, to make love out of thin air; if only she could swirl in, _suck in_ , the nothingness gutting her now, and yank her release out of it! He’s killing her with his eyes out of reach and his hands out of thoughts. He meets her sometimes; but he meets her in between. In between dreams, in between touches, in between looks. All their encounters were meetings of more wanting even more.

She tries to distract herself with her Knight; her Knight of gossamer and pain; her Knight who was never flesh, never blood, never a furnace to burn in.

“Do you recall the story of the Knight and the Queen?”

Ser Jorah looks anguished; she thinks having parted with his books must have hurt him. She will gift them back to him, one day. A small gift for a new Knight. But he tells her he would gladly hear it, and she relishes in the boiling quiet before the story comes.

“Once upon a time, there was a Knight and a Queen. The Queen wasn’t always a Queen; and the Knight wasn’t always a Knight. They made each other so.”

He’s burning holes into her skull, so focused is he on the story.

“The Knight was devoted to her; too devoted. He served his Queen; and that was the beginning and the end of his life. The Queen was a Queen because she saw herself in his vision. His eyes were always on her; and as long as his eyes followed her, she saw herself crowned in roses. She was powerful and she was gentle, because he saw both in her. She was unstoppable because he believed nothing could stand in her way. She was the Queen of Queens, because he believed she was so.”

Her voice chokes on her words; she doesn’t dare look at him. She couldn’t stand Ser Jorah looking at her with no such love filling his bottomless eyes.

“But in her pride, the Queen forgot she was mortal. She distanced herself from her Knight, and launched battle against an enemy too great; overtaken, without his eyes on her, she saw the end come for her.”

Ser Jorah creases his eyes; she looks at him from the corner of her own. He looks ravaged; does he feel the sadness of the story as intensely as she does? Does he find himself in that selfless knight?

“The Knight was swifter than the Lady of Death; he went between the blade and his Queen’s chest, and parried, and sidestepped, and whirled, and he downed an army of foes. He had no helmet; his curls were flying in the wind. He was twisting his jaw against pain. Corpses formed a wall around the Queen, until there was not a human standing on the battlefield. Still Death wanted her due. Still Death cackled at him; she hackled on his heels. ‘Your Queen is mine,’ Death said. ‘Not today,’ the Knight thundered, “not _ever_ ,” he said, and beheaded her. Death formed again, and again, and the Knight span his longsword, and battled her off. ‘I will fight you to the end of all things,’ the Knight snarled. ‘Take whoever you want, but do not take her.’ Death considered. ‘As you wish,’ Death said. And her airy arm went through his chest, and extinguished his heart.”

She seeks Jorah’s eyes then; she finds the glister in hers reflected into his. His lips are parted; his neck is turned away, frozen at the beginning of a shake.

“The Queen ruled alone over her grey castle, and she ruled across time, for Death would not take her, and she ruled over many, and her head was crowned in silver. But her heart was not ruled, and was not crowned, and was not loved, for Death would not take her. She was a Queen for people as numerous as the grass, and yet she felt abandoned. Without her Knight, she felt a Queen no longer. And so, when one who owned Death an impossible debt became tired of a rule of grey, and knifed the lost Queen through the heart, she did not feel sadness. She felt only relief; no longer would she have to believe without him.”

He averts his eyes from hers; his tongue wets his dry lips; why can’t he let her take care of that? She wants to feel his boiling mouth against the cool air. She wants him even more now that she has made herself sad, with this tale she cherishes. She wants to caress him slowly, intimately, in the home of their mouths.

“You adore this Knight, do you not?” Ser Jorah asks, his gaze locking back to her face. She answers him eagerly. “I love him! Do you see how he was _everything_ to her?”

“What is there to love?” he protests gloomily. “Is that it, then? You will rise to the top and when you are Queen, with a guard for every flagstone of your throne room, and you no longer need someone to protect you, you will no longer need a knight, then realise you do, too late?”

“You misunderstand me, Ser Jorah—I don’t need saving,” she said. “I have never needed saving. I need someone to believe I can save myself. I need someone who will love me at the bottom and the top of the world.” Heat rises in her cheeks. She said too much—he will see how much of this tale is her.

“But can you thus love in return, Your Grace?” he asks. “You conquer, and you take, but will you give?”

She wants to bristle and snap, but she wants to believe he’s saying more than he is, too, and stays her anger.

“Yes,” she answers, and she hopes he can hear the strain of pain in her voice, that he can understand it, that he wants to assuage it, “I want to, I _want_ , and that is why I do not take.”

“Sometimes,” he says softly, “it can be a gift to take.”

But would you let me take you? she thinks. Would you let me take the sweetness of your tongue? Would you let me rasp my skin on your beard, nip my lips on the sharpness of your teeth?

“If we ever are in danger, don’t ask me to stand aside as you meet our foe. I won’t watch you die,” she tells him instead.

“Is that what you fear?” he asks—gently. And he cups her cheek in his calloused hand, covering her blush, brushing her ear, and she dies at the touch of his hand. She wants to close the gap and kiss him. Her knees tremble. After some heartbeats, he lets his hand slide, slowly. His eyes are obscure, distant; she has skimmed his heart and it’s closed again.

They walk, and walk, and don’t exchange a word before Vaes Tolorro rises before them. In front of Jorah’s city of bones, they contemplate the broken-down walls.

“A fly upon a wall, the waves the sea wind whipped and churned—the city of a thousand years, and all that men had learned…” He recites softly, giving each word the fierceness of an entire world. Her heart constricts; he knows; he knows the words twirling in her mind. They’re ready on his tongue; they’re said in that voice.

“… The Doom consumed it all alike, and neither of them turned,” she finishes.

His eyes frame the unknown all around her face before raising to her, stormy and intent.

“Sometimes,” she says, ensnared in his stare, too distracted to hold back the speech escaping along her breath, “I look at you and I still can’t believe you’re real.” The confession she so carelessly let slide smashes against the strongholds of his face. He retreats on the last of her words, shunning her; the trenches forming between his eyes growing deeper and deep. Black eat at the depths of his eyes; and he contracts what little blue is left against her, battling her away; still she prays at him, frozen in a look much too wide. His lips part, but, rather than tearing her hopes in words, he moves his head away, thwarting the truth she shouldn’t have said.

She has no tears to hide; and yet she looks away. She’s dead, vacant, forsaken, unrequited—she doesn’t have the strength to hold the eyes he condescends to gift her back.

The wind whispers: out of the Red Waste he’ll come.

*******

Deep in her thoughts, she cries: her Knight is not here.

Ser Jorah shadows her thoughts.

It feels so good to have found her khalasar again. With them, her dreams of conquering the Seven Kingdoms still stand. With the Dothraki who have sworn her allegiance, she may still call herself a Khaleesi. And she had felt such relief upon seeing her handmaidens again—the closest to her, perhaps even only some memories away from being friends.

And yet something in her always lies tense. There’s a restlessness that can’t quieten gnawing at her nerves unless she’s with Jorah. And then her agitation doesn’t quieten; it becomes heat. What is happening to me? she thinks.

She wishes he would stop her steps. She wishes he would let himself collide with her; that he would catch her elbow, and make her turn, and crush her to his chest. His eyes are always on her. Seeking, seeking, seeking what? She feels small and insecure, powerful and huge in turn, when he gifts her words and touches her lightly, when he stays sullen and stays his hand.

He’s sitting under a fig tree now, whetting his sword with supple, regular movements. She can’t understand how Vaes Tolorro can sustain such vegetation, where it draws this water so cold. But then, Ser Jorah makes a greater mystery. How _can_ he be real? How can he be more than all she ever dreamed, and still be real?

Does he exist only to mock her, unobtainable, impossible, for her to shatter against his insurmountable walls? 

“Are those pauldrons?” she asks, pointing at the leather binding his chest. She has read of such things but, sometimes, even named things remain in the shadows, until they’re also seen.

“Yes,” says he, never stopping. “You use them to strap the armour into place.” Then he does stop, and his blue gaze narrows on her. “Does your Knight wear them too, then?”

“He does!” she agrees, gushing in her happiness to share more with him. Is it wrong for her heart to hope that, one day, one of these moments will tilt the tide in her favour, and he will want her then?

“I suppose it’s incredibly important that your Knight always maintains a recherché appearance whilst protecting himself from murderous attacks,” he tells her stiffly.

She laughs; she can see his collarbone dig moats around his neck: he strains to sharpen his sword.

“Rakharo has returned,” she says quietly. “With words of a city.” Her eyebrows worry on her forehead.

“I heard,” Jorah spats. “Qarth. It’s full of sorcerers. Do not go there.” In it she wants to hear, _don’t leave me_. When has she become the one who leaves? She must, and she can’t, and she knows not what she will do if she has to choose. It will rip her heart out of her chest, to leave Jorah in the city of bones.

“Where else should I go instead? The Gulf of Grief?” She stresses the _grief_ so he can hear hers. But he doesn’t; his face is set in stone.

“Not heeding my council? You hurt me to the bone,” sneers Ser Jorah, a frown twisting his lips. And then he sheathes his sword, bows, with an insulting smile on his lips, and walks away; away from her eyes, throwing her heart out of poise.

Daenerys stumbles across the camp in a daze, until she happens on Doreah who takes one look at her and quietly judging, says “Perhaps you’d like Irri to braid your hair now, Khaleesi?”

Daenerys is not sure if she should be affronted or grateful, but she follows her anyway, and lets herself drop on a large boulder, abandoning her silver hair to Irri’s magic, under the alert glance of Doreah.

“What happened, Khaleesi? Why are you sad?”

“I told him Rakharo came back—have you seen him yet?” Her handmaidens smirk at each other above her head, but Daenerys is too tired to care at their antics. Not tired—empty. Sad. Ser Jorah’s flame has gone cold. “And that he had seen this city where we could go. There is trade there and it’s on the Jade Sea, so from there, we could buy a ship… If we find money… It’s behind stone walls, so I will have to convince them to let us pass.”

Irri is massaging her head and instead of being relaxed, Daenerys finds herself annoyed. She wants to snap at the whole world. She wants to dislodge these fingers from her scalp; she wishes for them to be Jorah’s.

“That is good news, no?” says Doreah.

“Ser Jorah doesn’t think we should go there,” sighs Daenerys. The wrench of his derisive smile guts her. “He says the city is cursed.”

“You will make the right choice, Khaleesi,” Irri soothes. But Jorah’s warnings are not what ails Daenerys. She values his council—she never _had_ council before. She just wants their bond to be across power, across countries; she wants him to be always there, to follow her when she takes a risk. She wishes he would let her read his eyes, let her hear the unsaid lurking there.

“And then he said I hurt him to the bone, but it was mocking,” the admission slips from her lips before she can keep it to herself. It’s still cutting at her.

“Which _bone_ would that be?” snickers Doreah. “And why haven’t you boned him yet? Did I teach you for nothing?”

Daenerys flushes furiously. “How do you know I want to?”

Irri stifles a laugh. “What?” snaps Daenerys.

“It is written on your face you want him for sex,” Irri says, “so just ride him, why do you not? It’s been days.”

“And _days_ ,” adds Doreah, rolling her eyes.

“This time, it’s different,” Daenerys tries to explain, but the words are reluctant to pass her lips. “If he refuses me, I…”

“Khaleesi, what even are you talking about?” Irri tugs a bit quicker at her hair to mark her point. “If every look between you two was a tree, we would have a whole forest in the desert now.”

Doreah wets her lips. “And birds to catch and eat… do you imagine having fresh meat?”

“Birds? You are mean, Doreah, not the birds! Berries we would have and a real stream…”

“He doesn’t look at me like you say,” answers Daenerys dejectedly.

“He does,” Doreah shots back incredulously.

“He doesn’t,” says Daenerys.

“He does,” sighs Irri.

“Perhaps he _likes_ me, but he doesn’t _love_ me like this.”

Irri lets her head drop between Daenerys’ shoulder blades, forgetting her hair for a minute, groaning. “He _does_. It is just you have so much of lust in your eyes you can not see clearly.”

“Have you even taken care of yourself?” Doreah asks. “You did not, no?”

“No! Of course not, he was right there! What if he’d heard?”

“What about hearing it, he could have _helped you_ ,” says Doreah in a guffaw. Irri cuffs her lightly. “What?” protests Doreah, then, seeing the crestfallen look on Daenerys’ face, she asks: “Khaleesi… what has gotten into you? Why don’t you conquer him? Can you not see he will come to your bed?”

“But I don’t want him in my bed!” exclaims Daenerys, then catches herself before Doreah can quip at her. “I _do_ want him in my bed. But I… but I… I want him to love me.” Tears bead in her eyes. “Like I love him.”

“Love him?” asks Irri, her eyes round. “The crescent of the moon has just fattened since you met him… And already you are suffering? Oh, Khaleesi…”

“Just make him hard and guide him between your legs and you will feel better.”

“It is known,” agrees Irri. “Or let us help you.”

But Daenerys can no longer answer. Long tears pool in her eyes, down her cheeks and each tear says _he doesn’t he doesn’t he doesn’t, he does not love me_. Irri takes up her hair and for a time, they are quiet.

Then Irri asks, tentatively: “But then… why do you not tell him this?”

“I can’t!” protests Daenerys. “I told you, I don’t know how he feels. Sometimes I want to cut his head open so I can look inside! He’s maddening. And if he leaves… I can’t. I can’t—I won’t! I have no power over the source of… everything he gives me. I can’t tell him for him to leave and deprive me of it.”

“But, Khaleesi… do you hide from the sun every day because one day the rain will come?” prods Irri.

“The rain! It won’t be rain if he leaves, it will flood me, it will…”

“And yet,” Irri carries on. “You are Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. You are the Unburnt. You are the Mother of Dragons. You want Dothraki to cross the narrow sea. We swore we were blood of your blood. You want us to sail on a water of tears that horses cannot drink. And you cower at conquering happiness? Does that mean you would conquer only tears? Even the Moon Goddess is not so cruel, Khaleesi.”

Daenerys stills under Irri’s hands. She speaks matter-of-factly, simply, and she is right. She is. But Daenerys is so afraid.

“Khaleesi,” says Doreah unexpectedly gently. “You should speak to him soon. We cannot stay in this place forever. You have to decide where we go. To this Qarth city or elsewhere. But eventually, we will have to leave, and if you stay silent too long your Knight will not follow. He has too much pride in him.”

But he’s not my Knight, thinks Daenerys. He’s not… if only he wanted to. Fear and hopelessness battle in Daenerys’ heart. Irri and Doreah are right. When her hair is finished, donned as armour, she will fight for her place by his side.

The wind whispers: out of the Red Waste he’ll come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It’s incredibly important that your Knight always maintains a recherché appearance whilst protecting himself from murderous attacks" is inspired by a rewording of a quote from Punch magazine, England, September 27, 1856, as reblogged by bridgr6 on Tumblr. :)


	3. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

Deep in her thoughts, she cries: Ser Jorah is here.

Towering in her tent.

Her pleas to convince him to join her retinue are clashing against a formidable anger. He’s snarling; he nooses his steps in tightened circles. She imagines her khalasar hear him rave, in this common tongue so few of them know. What will they think? Irri and Doreah are giggling about a bear set free, she would bet a ripe fat fruit on it. She’s more worried about her bloodriders— _let them stay away_ , she thinks, they can’t walk in now—oh why does she want to protect him when she’s the one he’s fuming at? If only she could stop this rampage—if only she knew what would appease him.

He’s encased in a cloud he stomped off Vaes Tolorro’s red and white dust; his anger spatters on her carpets. He takes all the space, keeping her at bay with the set of his jaw. For a flitting moment, she thinks—he is magnificent. She sees him step out of a hole in the world, spiriting the strength of a hundred knights; she sees him rouse the ire of a thousand forsaken hearts. Is this how he would look tearing their enemies apart? Invulnerable and exposed, a breath away from death or glory eternal?

And then she catches his eyes and the illusion shatters; there is incommensurable pain there that she can’t understand. What could have the power to hurt him so? She can’t make sense of his words; there is a shadow under them, acidic and roiling, blustering on the heels of infected sentences.

“Come with us, Ser Jorah,” she cajoles in the most peremptory voice she can muster. “I would hire your sword.”

“And what would you give me for my services? Stories? It’s all I’m worth, is it not?” he snaps at her. “Scraps and rags you throw at me!”

“Please, please—come with me. I need you by my side.” She tries a different approach to breach the gap that seems to grow and grow on each of these circles he paces. She softens her voice to a lower tone, as one would for a frightened foal; but he won’t be soothed.

“And for what do you need me, then? Be your token knight?”

“Need you for?” she stumbles back. He means for those words to smack her, in earnest he means for them to hurt—she can see it in the vengeful gleam in his eyes; and he’s hitting his mark. “I—I—I—” Oh she does not know what to say. How can she bring him back? How can she ease his pain? What _can_ she say that he would hear! And would be safe for her to disclose—the truth? No! She can’t hand him the truth. She won’t, she can’t, the truth is a gamble too perilous in stakes! His heart is closed to her, how can she risk her own?

“Not a word comes to your mouth now, does it?” His nostrils flare. “Oh you have words enough for tales and legends! But for me, _for me_ , you have nought!”

“I—”

“Will I be the next thing you dispose of? When you want a change of scene, you will cast me aside for a new bard—a new, a new fool?”

“Jorah…” she tries. He’s battering her heart, forcing its gates open, pushing his anger through to vanquish her whole.

“Speak!” he roars, cutting her off. “Speak, will you deny even your voice to me? Even your voice—” his own breaks, his eyes lost on her throat, on her mouth, and he gulps, and yet, shaking and tall, still he won’t yield a foot for her to defend herself.

“I—” she tries again, but his voice drowns hers. “Oh speak,” he continues, softer now, mesmerizing in his wretched mournful cadence—his eyes glazed in tears. “Is there truly nothing you can find? Give me _something_ , give me anything, give me the castoffs of your dreams—but please, hand them over now, lest you’d have me flickering out.” He seizes her wrists, presses his lips violently against her pulse—firmly sealed to deny this kiss to be called thus.

“I would never replace you,” she whispers, though she would have shouted had he not emptied her lungs in the whirlwind of his rage.

“Replace me!” his mouth turns white in anguish. “But what is there to replace! What is? What is _mine_ in your eyes?” he pushes her back till she stumbles on a pillar, and there he dominates her, his eyes pinched, his nose frowning. “What is only mine? What? What?” he yells, his voice crackling on the salt of his throat, the emptiness of his eyes. She can’t answer; this uncoiling is too great, she doesn’t understand how to calm him, and her heart thrums and thrums in her chest, both cowering and drawn in. He drops his sweaty head on her bosom, pressing her hand to his hair: “How would you knight me, if I were your Knight? Would you stay silent then?” Surely he can taste her desperate heartbeats now, surely he can feel her breasts round under the weight of his brow, he has to—but he doesn’t. He collapses on his knees, falls to the dust, pressing his forehead to her belly, and underneath desire roams and slams against his skin, but he does not feel it. Oh _gods_ , what is he doing?

He’s undoing her—she _wants_ him. She wants this Knight, this man. She wants to rip this fireball of spiky ice out his chest, and replace it all with love for her. She wants to eat him, she wants to kiss him, she wants to make him hers, she wants him wild and feral and untamed and yet she wants him chained to her heart, yes she wants him _chained_ , she wishes he would never go; she wishes he would be hers, she wishes he would love her, oh why, why doesn’t he love her? If he loved her—she wouldn’t need him chained, she could let him roam free, she could let him devour her. Oh why doesn’t he unleash this torrent of torment to love her? He looks up at her; _I want you to be mine_ , she wants to shout at him, but what she finds in herself to tell, as regally as she can, is “I command you to stop at once,” and the last of her words breaks on his bristly laugh.

“ _Command_ me?” he exclaims, in injured jesting, “but if I’m not your knight, then you are not my queen, and you have no power over me.” Throes of sunset hue drown in the white of his eyes. And past the fine black line bounding the sea of his eyes, the outbreak of blue sparkles, in shattered drops of agony—and still, kneeling at her feet, he won’t be hers!

It will be her downfall to lose him. She can’t let him leave, it will kill her—and yet. And yet… And yet, better he would be lost to her than lost to this pain. She can’t let him suffer in her stead—she can’t, not if she can save him, not if she can carry his pain! And she wants to take, she wants to cull his love out of his heart, she wants to bind him to hers, she wants, she wants, she wants, she wants to seize it so she can at long last lavish him in love. She doesn’t want to, but she does, she _does_ —she goes past herself, and cleaves the admission out of the grips of her trodden heart. “I love you,” she confesses, trembling.

“Love? How can you say that to me?” he spits, chuffing backwards as if struck. “You love that paper knight you’ve made out of books! Where in him could you love _me_? Go, go to conquer your crown, if you can!” He struggles to get to his feet and when he does, he’s formidable, a swirl of tempest breaking against her.

“Jorah, please… Forgive me… I never meant…” she has never known such fear. How can she embrace a storm, and hold it hers? How can this wind surge her in, in the eye of its passion? Oh pledge me to your storm, tie me in thunder, Jorah—won’t you let in us rains of fire and flames of rain merge in searing love? 

“Are you even speaking to me now, or to _him_? I cannot take this perpetual fight against myself, against a phantom of myself—I can never be your knight! Your selfless, brave, noble, perfect, _flawless_ knight. And I? Where am I—what am I, a replacement? Mark my words well, to be so perfect your knight had to hide something, he had to betray you—”

She raises her arm to him, trying to reach out, to appease him, to cradle him back to her chest and keep him there.

“You don’t understand,” she says. “I’m not animating you with his deeds. I… You’re not competing against him. I… I’m not dreaming you, am I? You _are_ real?”

“Real?” he roars. “What manner of reality could give you proof? Is it my blood you want? You would need for me to take a blade in your name, and bleed me out of all life, so when I lay all spent at your feet, you would then know, at long last!, all of me had been yours? Then take it, _I say take it_ ,” he presses the blade he keeps at his belt in her hand, and presses his chest to her fist, to their entwined hands, the blade biting at the leather, “why do you not take it? Bleed me dry, do it, and then you shall have your perfect, infallible, timeless knight and I will no longer have to watch you mock me with your love for him!”

The blade licks his fiery fuzz; she wrestles him for control; he bares his teeth at her, his tongue darting out, his feverish eyes exploring her own in frenzied hunger. “Do you see me now?” he demands forcefully, his words straining his heart towards the cut she tenses to avoid. “Or am I stepping into his form? You would have me follow you for me to play him? But can you not see I can’t—you can’t ask this of me! Send me beyond the Wall, send me against an army of wights—I’ll find the untraceable, I’ll break the odds on your command, but please, my Queen, choose me. Why don’t you take me instead?” She tries to let go of the knife but he does not let her. “Why won’t you see I’m here?” he pleads; his eyes are as wild as his hair. Her lips round upon his orisons; her blood is leaping in the beginning of hope.

“No? Is it to be no, no against a shadow? Then take my heart out, _carve it out_ ,” He forces her backwards and so back she steps; but he holds her tight and follows her there. “No,” she moans rather than cowers, and on that cry—he looks at her, looks into her, and he sees—her—and she hears a ringing silence around his voice as his eyes distend in desire.

“No?” he repeats slowly, his fingers grazing her skin though his palm is still crushing her fist on the handle. “Still no, then, Khaleesi?” His eyes drop to her opened lips and he goes still, transfixed. “Still you say no, then, my Lady? You will not stab me and eat my heart?” His lips are parting, his eyes are kissing her; she can’t move, she can’t speak, she can only feel his heart hammering under the blade, the blade heating over his heart, her hands trembling in his—his hands set in iron—short of bruising. “And a no, too, from you—Daenerys?” he breathes, “could it be then, that you want me alive?”

“Yes,” she answers lost in his eyes, and, for a suspended moment, she is balanced on time—lost in the tipping point, there in the eye of the storm.

Her heart beats.

Beats.

Beats.

And his teeth sink into her lip.

An upsurge of blood floods her head.

A collapse of images flames her core. 

She’s lifted into his kiss—at last oh gods his love, his lips, his kiss, him to her there! The handle of the knife roughs their ribs; she doesn’t care, it can stab her, what difference would it make? She is dying of _now_ , of the present combusting in flames. Her knees are weak, she can’t breathe in enough, she can’t—she just, wants, more, oh so much more. _Jorah_ , she moans in his mouth, her lips on his, oh gods, his kiss on hers. He cradles her neck, nay—presses it to him, closer, still closer, always closer; the knife clatters to the ground, and is kicked away. She rakes his curls; she drips her fingers in the diaphanous shadow of gold steamed on his hair. She traps her hand underneath his leather strap, digging her nails into his flesh, into his heart—and his lips; his mouth; oh he’s hers, he loves her, he’s kissing her—he rumbles on her tongue; she tastes it. She caresses him in the warmth of his mouth—she kisses the pulse of the broken paces of his voice. His smile on his lips; she follows it, she crushes the throbs of her moans between their tongues, and she feels him—his wild curls, his tense muscles—under her hands, warm and alive and there, there, _there_.

He’s playing with her hair, unbraiding them, making them wild. His hand is going down her back, way down—oh, on the small of her back, and lower down, round the curve of her buttocks, and down, curling round her thigh, curving inwards; curving up—and she gasps in his mouth, and grinds against him—but this is no release, for he is there, meeting her mound in hardness, gorged in want, and the sparks cut at her, spear her deep, she feels stabbed dead, and she says— _Jorah_ —though she can’t quite say it, and so he doesn’t know if it’s his name or her heart she rasps out, but he hears her, and his chest heaves in answer, thundering against her in rumbles. He lets go of her lips to kiss her under her ear, and she whimpers, claims back his lips to hers, and he kisses her once, twice, thrice, and then once more, and then he gives her his fingers to trace her lips on—while his graze her neck, and she feels his tongue drinking the pulse of the artery bulging there in the curve. His scruff scratching her fine skin, his hot breath that feels like vapour—there is a contrast there that unbalances in bliss.

“Am I real enough now?” he brokenly asks, and she can’t answer; he stops, panting, his eyes wild and dark and drunk—on her. “Am I real enough?” he repeats, and his voice cracks on the _real_ , whispers it, and she hears only what he means; _am I enough?_ and she can’t understand how he could think—“yes, yes, yes,” she answers, stepping on his boots to raise herself, roaming his face, searching his eyes, kissing him; “I love you,” she says again. The admission hurt before, when she wasn’t sure it would be welcomed; but now it bathes her heart in fire. It feels like home—she’s entirely herself for the first time in her life. She’s at home in her own heart. And he’s there, sweeping her up, laying her down on her bed, disrobing her.

“Your skin is so white,” he says, his sweet tongue and chaffed lips tasting her. “Except for…” he rasps, and takes her red-rose nipple between his lips, and his tongue darts out to wet it and harden it, and rolls it round round on his tongue, his fingers sending darts of yearning up her thighs, into her core, as they lift her dress. She feels his nails grazing her, and she buckles, against him—his navel, hard, but that is not the hardness she wants to feel, and suddenly a dark thought, a fear, stops her. “Jorah,” she quivers—she does not know if it’s from fear or need.

He stops, his hand a pulse from the curls at the juncture of her thigh, and stills, apart from his chest that swells as he breathes above her.

“You won’t disappear, will you?” she asks. He furrows his brow at her; she dares to explain it all. “What more could happen after this? If this is the peak we will ever have, are we destined to wane ever after, and then—you will leave? Leave me?”

He looks stormily down at her, makes her sit, takes her face between his hands. Her chest is hurting, she feels ill. As if she could die. She flexes her left hand to make sure it’s still responding—it is, but then where is that ripping coming from?

“And so you would walk out now, rather than risk this?” he says darkly and she fears—she has lost him. But she underestimates him; his eyes grow in fondness, he combs her hair lightly, his blue eyes shining. “You do not get to walk away from your Knight, Daenerys Stormborn. You have not been dismissed.” His chest expands as he straightens, and she watches in awe as Jorah becomes her Knight, before her eyes, tall and true and her strength in life. “I pledged myself to you. I swore to obey your commands for the rest of my life.”

“You did?” she risks asking.

“Yes, my Lady love, my Liege, my Queen, I _did_. I saw a girl passed out of thirst with three baby dragons. When the night flickered out I thought I’d leave her bones to whiten. Instead I saw you—Daenerys—alive and unhurt, looking up at me as if I might’ve been your Knight. It’s hard to be a cynic after that.”

“But Jorah—Jorah—what will happen when the night dies?”

“When the night ends?” he rasps. “I will want more,” he says, kissing the space when her shoulder meets her neck, “and more,” he kisses her heart, “and more,” her lips, “I will always want more, I want you in eternal night, in eternal light.” His kisses lay her anew upon the bed; his hands follow the loll of her recline. “I love you now, and forever, and always I will love you more, and more, and more, and more, because you make me true and I make you true, and I need you to feast on that light you grow in my chest, to the end of all forevers, for all the times that happened upon us once.”

He looks at her, then, and looks down, away, to hide his too-fond eyes. There is a trembling at the keystones of his lips; there where his smile hides in shadows—a light draped in a shade. She sees it flicker, his smile; she sees it vacillate along the slow enticing prance of a flame. She follows the flares of flicker-fire, sees them sink into his eyes, sees their sparks of jubilant hues light his glance aglow; and those are the eyes he gifts her, suddenly, in a dart of elation, a sunfire of triumph. He meets with her shivering smile; and upon their collision his lips twitch and crack, and there, finally: his smile breaks out and outbreaks, wild and wide and why hasn’t he let himself meet her this free before?

“Do you promise?” she asks of his smile, arching her back for him, to offer her breasts, for him to nuzzle his beard on her soft skin. He traces her veins lightly with this tongue, he hums against her skin.

“Do I promise, what?” he growls on her skin. “Do I promise to always hunger for you? Do I promise to always be your Knight, to believe in you more than you do yourself, to believe in you to the end of the world? _I promise_.”

She has to— _ah_ —moans, because he’s kissing her belly, and underneath something in her coils and rages and craves his touch to reach it, she doesn’t quite know how—she knows but she… _Jorah_ … 

“Do I promise to always meet your soul to dance and dance and dance, and to cherish your heart and hold it through all tempests? Yes, my Lady Khaleesi—this I do promise you.”

“Jorah,” she says, but it is not what she means. What she means is I love you, and you shatter my heart by rebuilding my dreams, that is—by making me see they can come true, I love you, _I love you_ —“And you, love of mine, what do you promise me?”

“I promise…” she breaks up and he kisses her tears, his smile melting her heart, shaping it anew so it may grow big enough to hold all of this smile, and all of his smiles. “You promise me your jewels of tears?” he asks, and she has to answer.

“I pledge to meet your love, and always climb on it, so that we may step higher and higher, and to never let you go in fear. I promise to trust you will always hold my hand up there in the skies, I promise to see in you the Knight you are and the man you are both, I promise—but please, Ser Jorah, please don’t make me wait longer. Jewels of tears are gathering south,” she smirks.

“Tears?” he exclaims; his smile is a net, choking her heart in tenderness. “Drops of honey, I rather think—let me check for you, won’t you, my Queen?”

He wets the golden curls of his head on hers, his mouth so very near her pleasure bud. She feels the hot air he breathes out; the cool air when he inhales, and the promise of them both. _Use it to reap your pleasure from useless men who would retain it for themselves alone_ , Doreah had said, _So much the Moon Goddess sends is for hurt, but this is her gift to us, that is just for our pleasure. It is known_ , Irri had agreed. But he knows, and he’s wetting it, gathering the honey in her folds from its source and bringing it up, massaging the salty, clear honey to gently coax the tip of her pearl in the open, when his tongue can greet it in sizzling bolts. She moves without meaning to and she—oh she had always moved because Doreah advised it and because it seemed logical to have movements, but surely, oh she hadn’t known it was supposed to be like this, that her body would move on his mouth on its own, without her having any choice but to seek more and more and more.

She can’t keep reclining; he holds her thighs apart, he presses them down, but her back surge up, and up, until she’s almost sitting, twisting her coiled gorged nerves on his lips, grating her throat with her voice rasping Jorah, Jorah, Jorah, and he twists her legs up over his shoulders—she falls, her back falls back to the mattress—and his tongue darts and darts before circling, slipping on her slippery folds and yet bearing down on her pleasure, and then his lips entwine her and press down, and she shoots up once more, trapping his damp forehead against her belly, thrusting up her intimate lips against his chin, forcing her swollen flesh sharper against his mouth—the sharp sizzle of his beard keeping her grounded until—it—all—and Jorah sucks her in and she has to let go, and fall, and surrender to her Knight in a throaty shout.

When her eyes focus back on Jorah, he’s looking back at her, his eyes wide and rimmed in black, and swallowed in darkness, his lids hooded to cradle her image between them, his feral frown shouting he will never let her go; his gaze cleaves itself into her. The flickering shine of the lantern lights his golden skin in glowing hues; his ginger hair glitter in the flames. She discovers the sinews and veins running just there, under his skin; and just above, there the light canters too; it coils on the rises and falls of his muscles, and drapes shadows round to frame them. She looks at the light and the light looks at her, entreats her, and the fire licks her once more, wetting her inner lips once more and he can tell, she sees it in his eyes laced in lust—he’s pressing into the mattress, grinding there softly as he waits for her, his teeth grating against the hurt of a need too great for his loins.

“Oh… Ser, but you seem troubled,” croons Daenerys, scratching his cheek. He rests his brow upon hers, his nose nuzzling into hers. He’s forcing serenity into his eyes, she can see, but his jaw is screwed tight, and his yellow shirt, opened and gaping all the way to his navel, does not hide the tense line of his shoulders, the surging rampart of his collarbone setting itself against, against what?—pleasure perhaps, evidently pain, and a growl surely most of all. She kisses his eyes, the lines of his cheekbones, the corners of his mouth, her heart fluttering at the twisting shadow of sweet ache on his face, at the salty taste of her juices and his sweat her tongue tastes upon her lips. “Won’t you tell your Queen how she can reward her loyal Knight?”

He snarls at that, and her hand traces his chest, easing the strings of his yellow shirt down to the tails, and then she takes it off, gliding her hands and the cloth at once on his feverish skin. Oh—her lovely sufferer, what does he hope to gain by keeping himself chained to her hand, to her command, to her will? She follows lightly the ginger route of his hair on his tense and shivering stomach, and there she tightens her fingers and he hisses at her, giving way, receding, and setting himself on his back on her pillows, subduing his quivers to her hands. She smiles sweetly into his long gone, lost in lust look, and her hand floats over his belts, flittering on each flower etched there, her silver hair teasing his ribs. “Gift me your voice, and I will crown you Knight of love and beauty,” she bends down over him to whisper in his ear and he shudders, his hips seeking the touch of her hand, and she smiles. “No? I will help you gain your favour, then, Sweet Ser,” she says as she unhooks his belts and parts his long skirt and though his back cowers in the mattress, she can see the form in his pants strain, and move, and twitch; oh so she can command with her eyes the price she means to uncover, can she? He’s drowning in her face, panting; and she smirks at him as she strokes his cock through his black breeches, wetting her lips at that darker patch on dark up his thigh, watching his chest fight and coil and his powerful hands twitch, his veins overrun in a surge of blood, his cheeks slapped in lust underneath his gold-like gruff.

“Why are you sulking, Ser Jorah, now, that you won’t answer your Liege at her call? Speak—I command you!”

“But I can’t—my Queen,” he rasps through his teeth, his manhood searching her hand and his hips straining to evade the touch he craved.

“No? And why is that?” she requires, pressing down on him, drinking the rapture that flickers on his face, and waltz there with pain.

“Because I,” he growls low, “I _want_ , oh I just long,” his voice is a dark brown trickle of a voice that traps her into the mesmerizing shades of it, “to _overthrow you_ , my Queen.”

“Rebellion?” she gasps, her chest pecked in heat that eat over her neck, and her cheeks, and her mind. “Oh, sweet Ser, you would mutiny against a defenceless Queen?”

“I would,” he begs, or bids, she can see his mind drowning in itself, and hers is collapsing under the pressure that builds and builds, and then he adds, “if you don’t restrain me,” and her lips part, for her tongue to pass over these words she inhaled.

“But, Ser, I would not have you restrained—can you not see, Jorah, that I would have you unleashed?” His chest thunders then, sizzling her core, and he beseeches her, buckling against her hand, “Free me then, Daenerys, _free me_ now!” And she does. And as soon as he grinds his teeth against the cooler air hitting his sensitive flesh, he commandeers her hand in his larger one, to roll her fingers round him and crush his pain in all-encompassing pleasure. “Wait, oh gods, wait!” she cries, fighting against his grip to collect more of the white dew gathering in the wake of his bliss; she does not want her dry hand to burn him; he yields, groaning, for a moment, and she sweeps over the head—oh how he shudders, even his shoulders shake when her touch meets him there to coat him down in the white coat marking him as her Queensguard; and because he doesn’t reclaim her hand, his head thrown back helplessly, the whole of his neck bared for her to surrender him to her power, his curls swinging down as if they’ve caught the rain; she cannot help but to—trace gently the length of him between two of her fingers, hovering between a touch and a tease, stopping just short of feeling his veins on the sides of her voyage; but her rebellious Knight won’t have her play him, and he squeezes her fingers, growling against the pressure, moulds her hand back all around him, and pumps her fist up and down as she marvels at the fine thin skin that covers his pink-kissed-in-red tip, and divulges it anew, and then hides it again, to show once more its rosy flush, drowned in tears of white and glistening shine, as he makes her hand move.

His neck is bulging in ropes of strain; “Daenerys,” he gasps, “Daenerys, I want more, my love,” and he stops, his hand loosening her own, though he still moves in her hand, torn between taking and retreating, “please, I need—” he begs, this time he begs, “oh please don’t deny me more!”

“Jorah,” she half-moans, “just ravish me, for the love of—can you not see I—” but Jorah has moved, straddling her over him and there he spears all the length and girth of his cock between her folds and up—up hitting the home of jolts. She can’t—her thighs shudder on each side of his hips—she spasms around him, she can’t, she’s not sure she’ll have the strength to move up the length of him, and take him down wholly back home, but he beseeches her, _Daenerys_ , and she breathes in to ground herself, she won’t deny him more, she won’t! But the air itself is saturated with the heady scent of him, and the sharp tang of it on her tongue is enough to tear a moan from her throat, as she drinks and drinks at the air to trickle the taste of him down her tongue to her belly, where it meets the turmoil his crown is pressing there. She clenches helplessly at his shaft, her muscles, utterly defeated in ripples, refusing to lift her up.

He can tell, she can see—and before she can regain her senses, before she can reign them in, he seizes her rump, and moves her himself to glisten him in ups and downs; his arms are straining, his mouth latches on her nipples to ground him and she loses track of the threads of her mind, she’s overpowered, she doesn’t know quite where to move, it’s all—everywhere—she can’t. Her world shakes, and she tries to hold on, she cups his sack in a trembling hand to press it against her flesh, the added pressure too much—Jorah—his growl—Jorah—turn feral—Jorah—on her breast, and he raises a crooked knuckle against her unhooded pearl in retribution, _gods_ , she cries a guttural dissent to the—unfair—Jorah—thrill, her honey, mixed with his, soaking his balls, her thighs, travels up to their gold and silver curls.

“Now,” he growls, “my love—could _he_ —have—given—you—that?” She can’t answer; she’s overwhelmed—her legs are shaking, her eyes are extinguished time and time more by blowouts of unthoughts. “Ohhh, my Queen,” he rasps roguishly, “you are ripe to be overthrown,” and he twists her on her back, under him, and this time when he hits a love worn down nerve she shatters in his arms. Heat erupts in lovebites specks up her back, up her neck, explodes in licks of flame on her cheeks, bursts through her mind. Her muscles grip him hard in her stead—there’s nothing she can control anymore—as he carries her through her undoing; though he, too, shudders and takes refuge in her arms, his face enlightened beyond feelings as he jolts his release into her, growling a grateful sound that could be her name or the idea of it—her ears ring in fire, but she knows how he says her name, how he always says it, in love and passion and a hint of disbelief. “Jorah,” she answers him, but her throat is too coarse, her mind long gone, and he, too, hears only the intent, and kisses her, moving in amorous thrusts into her as he softens, and the shakes ruling her recede. Still she dances this slow dance in their embrace, delaying the moment he’ll slip from her.

“Jorah,” she says at last, finding her voice, trying to ease the rawness of her throat in the love she places on the letters of this name. She rubs the fur on his chest and marvels at the sweat she finds beaded there—she smells it in remembrance, so that she may later foresee her rapture at the rise of this scent, “we will always play like this, and love like this, won’t we?”

“Yes, Khaleesi,” he smiles devilishly down at her.

“And we will conquer the whole world, and break all the wheels, won’t we?”

“Yes, my Queen,” he agrees again, and lets himself be brought down to be kissed.

“And you will always love our sons, even when they outgrow sitting on your boots and cuddling inside your shirt, and we finally have to face that they will never be tame, won’t you?”

“ _Yes_ , my love,” he agrees once more, smoothing her hair so he can tangle it himself round his fingers, his voice worshipping every syllable of the endearment.

“And, when the moonlit grass has eaten the land whole, we will still play in fire, and still at the Doom will we love in flames; for all the times, whether be us ghosts, stories or flesh, Jorah?” he nods, and though she chokes in emotion, she adds: “We will—I will always love you.”

“Aye so will we, my Lady—for you _never_ will be dismissed from your rule over me,” he pledges anew. “And—I love you for ever, Daenerys. I love you in all the worlds, and in all the worlds I find you. I promise you—wherever you are, in times gone and times to come, I always find you. And I always love you—and we burn away the night separating us, because your Knight is I, I am your Knight, and I am here.”

“Out of the Red Waste you came,” she chimes dreamily and palms the strength of his heart. His hand presses down on hers, and she lets her nails cut at his skin—just enough of a chip to leave red marks—though she no longer needs a blade to cut his chest open and look upon his heart. She knows his heart is always a nook larger than hers. She always has to eat the beats his love drums for her; and, on these beats, she grows her heart to keep all of him home. So that he will swallow her love—to swell his more; forevermore. “I love you,” she whispers on his low hum, drifting to reverie; he is hers ever after and, in his arms, fearless does she greet the embrace of night—fearless does she greet the ineluctable promise of dawn.

She dreams—she dreams of red comets and swirling stars, she dreams across time and matter, she dreams she’s dancing high, and as she dreams free and wild, she knows she can rise up and up, and up, and up, and never ever fall—where could she fall now? His love is more than the vastness of the sky.

*******

In the Red Waste all was still, but for Jorah Mormont.

His heart was not still.

His heart was exploding. His heart was combusting; his heart was unbridled, tempestuous, _almighty_. He wanted to catch the world entire and gift it to her, to _Her_ —he would, he would, oh, but then he would tear all that was him out of his chest, and submerge her in his love, until she would again look at him in those purple eyes—in her rapture—and still, her mouth pouting in satiation, he would give her more, and more, and more, always more, always _more_. _You will never be satiated, will you, Daenerys?_ he wanted to ask, he wanted to nibble at her, and wake her, and love her again, taste her again, find her again.

He wanted to crush her to his chest, in his arms; all his desires were swelling and rising. He wanted her again—he wanted to shake her awake, and part her thighs, and spear her all the way to her heart.

But he shouldn’t wake her up yet.

Not yet, not just yet—not when she was so peaceful into his arms, on her side, her palm still cupping his cantering heart, nestling into him.

Jorah unfolded his arms, slowly, delicately, and moved away—oh just enough to gaze down at her, in wonder, in the almost light of the almost night.

He had listened to her breath slow into sleep; but he longed for it now. He brought his ear carefully to her lovely rounded nose, to feel her breath as it left her and was taken in; oh that all these breaths would have the chance to trickle down her lungs, to huddle so close to her heart! He listened; when she breathed out, he could feel it on the line of his ear, on his neck, still hot from her body, in a sound not quite her voice and yet by her made.

“Daenerys,” he said to himself, so quietly his voice melted in the night, her vowels silk of dark and her consonants bite of stars. He struggled to catch his breath, choking and choking, on the knowledge her name was his to say.

He looked at her lashes, so delicately resting upon her skin. He wanted to kiss her there—he had yet to kiss her there, oh what was this oversight? He looked at the softness of her cheeks, their roundness blushing at the curl of her smile. He traced the air, just above her skin, in light kisses he would kiss hard when at last she woke; he laced his head in swallows of the musky scent of sand and ash and flowers that had been the only thing of hers he had been able to hold in his mouth all these days—all these days, Daenerys!

Oh he would have complained, had she been awake—he would have bargained a kiss, a touch, a smile, to assuage his heart—to lit him on fire.

His fingers shook softly. She loved him, after all—after all he had thought she didn’t feel! He wanted to calm his hands into the glorious crown she was resting on now—pooling past her shoulders, unmade and made wild by his hand. Oh he twitched to bury his hand whole in the softness of her mane, where it would disappear in warmth and silk, where new hair would push at his fingertips as he’d trace the curve of her scalp!

His heart beat painfully; out of disbelief she would be his at long last; chunks of ice, bitter blades of self-depreciation, of unrequited fear, tore through his chest as they left him. She _loved_ him; she let him love her as much as he needed to give her.

Her skin was so delicate; still flushed from where he had held onto her; oh he hadn’t meant to mark her—he hadn’t, but seeing the flush of his hands upon her skin made his heart constrict. The crook in her neck—he wanted to burrow his head in it.

She was so soft and warm in his arms. Her heart sang under the trail of his finger. She shivered—oh just a bit—when he grazed her skin, she whimpered—oh just a sigh—when he left her skin to contemplate her chest, her breasts, softened in her slumber—a line of blue twirling round the rosy tip of her white mound. He looked at her brows, not dancing now, dozing like her.

Oh, his Queen, his fierce love, his gentle Queen—he had so often looked at her, so often had he tried to avoid looking at her, so she wouldn’t see, on his face, all that he could not have—so he would not see, on her face, all that he could not have.

“I love you,” he whispered, looking down where their bellies met, where their legs still entwined. Later, he would bathe her in soft linen and tender hands. But for now, he would look at her dream. He would bask in the ache, he would bask in the pain, now that he knew she was his at the end of the wait.

He would look at her, and try—not to cry.

“Once in the world,” Jorah murmured, cradling gently Daenerys’ head back on his chest, “once in time, there was a Fallen Knight of Sorrow. The Knight had tried to give his heart; but his heart was trodden on, and so flat was his heart it could not rise his loves up; and so flat was his heart he won not another joust, not another day, and lost instead all his shine away. ‘What use is my heart then?’ thought the Knight. ‘What use am I then?’ thought he. Oh small was the Knight without his heart.”

He curled himself all around her.

“He followed a red comet,” Jorah went on, softly, sweet tears lining up the slope of his cheekbones, “and he said: ‘Oh, I missed you, my love, while I was waiting for you. Thank you for giving me back to me.’”

He closed his eyes, his lashes fondling her hair.

“His Queen was so bright, she was a light for all; sometimes his chest hurt in fear, until she turned back, to him, and smiled, and he was knighted anew. ‘I am the fire in her heart,’ he would say, ‘I am her Knight and she is _my_ Queen.’”

He drifted off to sleep, her lips upon his heart, and he dreamed. He dreamed she loved him tight, he dreamed she held him tight. He dreamed no more than now.

His Queen was there.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :) I welcome all thoughts!


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